Elephant in your room: Google takes Magic Leap into virtual reality

This is what you will be able to see out of your eyes (Image from magicleap.com)

Google, semiconductor giant Qualcomm and other blue chip companies have invested $542 million in venture funding into Magic Leap, a little-known company that promises to mesh virtual objects with our view of the world.

This is the second successful round of investment for the Florida
company, which has not brought out a single commercial product or
prototype, but is now valued at over $1.6 billion. While Google
has led the investment round, other prominent funders included
KKR, Vulcan Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers,
Andreessen Horowitz and Obvious Ventures.

Magic Leap already brought in $50 million earlier this year, in a
previous investment round.

"Magic Leap is going beyond the current perception of mobile
computing, augmented reality, and virtual reality. We are
transcending all three, and will revolutionize the way people
communicate, purchase, learn, share, and play,"boasted
the maverick founder, president and CEO Rony Abovitz.

So just what is offered by Magic Leap, which says it has combined
“hardware, software, sensors, core processors, and a few
things that just need to remain a mystery” in its projected
device?

But instead of being projected on a flat screen, these images are
part of real landscapes, as seen by the human eye.

Abovitz says the effect will be created by a “light, wearable
device,” and tech website Re/code reported that it will
include a projector that will trace the users’ eyeballs and beam
images into them, using depth perception tricks to convince them
that what they are seeing is a 3D object far away, not just a
signal sent from a few centimeters.

Unsurprisingly, as film producers look to further the success of
3D films, Magic Leap has also attracted money from Legendary
Entertainment in the current round of investment.

But Google likely has a more ambitious plan for Magic Leap’s
technology, which ties in with its Google Glass smartglasses,
which have gradually been rolled out for the past two years.

Echoing Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Abovitz told Techcrunch
that the “world is the desktop,” meaning that instead of
interacting with the screen when searching or working, people can
now do this directly with the outside world, with the aid of
technology that better understands real life objects, as seen by
the human eye.

Abovitz said that although a member of Google will accept a place
on the Magic Leap board, the two projects will not be merged, and
use different approaches.

As well as expanding its capabilities Google’s acquisition can
also be seen as a defensive move against Facebook, which
purchased virtual headset maker Occulus for $2 billion earlier
this year. That company’s headline project, the Occulus Rift, is
set to appear on the shelves sometime next year.

The move represents a display of trust by Google in Rony Abovitz,
who last year orchestrated a $1.65 billion deal for MAKO
Surgical, a robotic surgical arm producer he earlier co-founded.
Despite a solid track record, Abovitz cuts a zany figure – he
gave a Dadaist performance at a TedX Talk last year in Florida,
and Magic Leap’s staff page says that his team consists of
"software ninjas" and "psychedelic physicists."

But while the possibilities (and the sums involved) are becoming
increasingly dizzying, one person has sounded a note of alarm at
the escalating hype over the new wave of virtual and augmented
reality headsets.

“Until we see the device, you have to be a little
skeptical,” Brian Blau, an analyst at Gartner, who has
closely watched the industry for two decades, told the New York
Times.